19 b) Expert report of Christian Salazar Volkmann, expert in the rights of the child There is a widespread lack of social protection for children in Guatemala. In general, this country is among those at the bottom of the list of Latin American countries as regards illiteracy and basic education, health and malnutrition, and child labor. There is also a lack of legal protection: the legislation on minors in force in the country violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The illiteracy rate is approximately 30% of the population. Only 84% of school-age children are enrolled in primary school and not all of them finish. The level of State investment in public education is one of the lowest in Latin America. Also, the levels of nutrition are very low; this is a cause of great concern, because damage to the brain and to the physical and psychological development of the child during its first years due to malnutrition is irreversible. According to recent data, in Guatemala, 34% of children between 7 and 14 years of age work and this has consequences on their education. In Guatemala almost all the adoptions are international and extrajudicial; in other words, there is no State control over them. The United Nations Children’s Fund (hereinafter “UNICEF”) has detected a series of irregularities. A study by this agency shows that the majority of children who are adopted come from crèches or families. The lawyers who process adoptions pay women to take care of the babies, who are generally under 18 months old. The United Nations Mission for the Verification of Human Rights in Guatemala (hereinafter “MINUGUA”) has learned of the existence of networks that traffic children and, in its report on children for 2000, indicates that the State continues to fail to comply with its legal obligation to prevent, investigate and punish crimes related to the trafficking of children. These examples of lack of attention to the rights of the child reveal two issues: first, that cases such as that of the San Nicolás Woods are probably extreme expressions of a structural neglect of the rights of the child and, second, that the number of children who are at risk of “callejización” (taking to the street), owing to this social neglect in Guatemala, is very high; the families and the children of the population living in poverty, which is more than 80% of the total population, are at risk. Generally, street children maintain some links with their families and very often make financial contributions to them. Also, there is a high degree of fluctuation; that is, children continually go onto and leave the street, which suggests that the number of children and adolescents with street experience is very high. According to a 1999 Government report, street children have three basic problems: ill-treatment (within their families and by the State’s security forces), drug addiction, and lack of State attention to their needs. And, in this report, these children very clearly reveal their desires: they all want to study, play, learn a trade and work. In Guatemala, it is difficult to establish what happens when street children reach a certain age, for example, 18 years of age or similar. A percentage of the youth really try to leave the street at all costs. There is a group of children and adolescents who enter the reintegration programs of civil society organizations, as of a result of which they are reincorporated into the family and find a job. Other children die on the way, from serious diseases or acts of violence. The problems of drugs and AIDS, to which street children are particularly vulnerable, have increased